Tag: Finding Books

So you want to find something different to read. Maybe romance is your thing but your tired of endless vampire romance novels that blend together in your head. Dark brooding guy, face of an angel, woman whose always wanted a little excitement in her life gets more than she bargained for, you could probably recite the generic vampire romance in your sleep, right? Or how about military sci-fi? You don’t even need to read the book to know there will be a tough NCO, desk jockey brass causing problems, a wet-behind the ears lieutenant, and the one good officer just trying to do their job and keep their men (and women) alive.

You know there is some original, genre breaking fiction buried among the stuff that you’ve read a hundred times over. But how do you find it?

The truth is publishers want you to be able to find those books. We want them to be recognizable and obviously outside the trend. So for the next couple weeks we’ll be sharing our take on how to find the original fiction you are looking for.

Look at the Cover

Ryk Spoor’s new book, Princess Holy Aura is coming out in December. The cover has a man doing the classic “Superman” reveal, except instead of an “s” we see a picture of an anime-style girl. That cover tells your right away that there is a “reveal” in the book that reminds the cover-artist or author is something from anime. Even if you aren’t familiar with anime, the different art style tells you that there is probably something different about this book. If you ARE familiar with anime, you have a decent chance putting the girl and the title together and coming up with “mahuo shojou”.

We all know the saying “don’t just a book by it’s cover.” What most people don’t know is the saying was from the 1800s, long before images on covers were a thing. What it originally meant was “just because the printer did a bad job making the cover doesn’t mean the author did a bad job writing the book.” These days a lot of thought goes into cover images. Authors, publishers, and cover artists all want the cover image to tell readers something about the story.

So if you are scrolling through the urban fantasy section on Amazon and all the covers seem to be blurring together, the cover that stands out from the pack probably represents a book that doesn’t fit with the usual “urban fantasy” expectations. In other words, it’s something different.

Want to see more original, genre-breaking fiction? Support Cuil Press and help us bring something new into the world of publishing.

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About Cuil Press

Lilith found the book world decidedly lacking in black enby rulers of the solar system, polyamory romances with disabled characters, and re-incarnated goddesses with chips on their shoulder from millennia of dealing with patronizing All Powerful Deities.
Ze hooked up with a couple of other authors and pitched an idea—let’s start a new kind of publisher.
And here we are.

About Cuil Press

Making space in publishing for black enby rulers of the solar system and polyamory romance with disabled characters.